The other night in a book-reading-and-discussing-group that I have been invited to, I riffed a bit on not reading news. Well, maybe it was a rant, not a riff. Whatever.

Anyway, I made an argument for not reading the news. I also was asked some questions, and here are more thought-through answers.

(And, to repeat, if my argument and FS Blog’s, below don’t convince you, read “Reading the news is the new smoking.”)

Why you should stop reading news

The inspiration was from FS Blog titled “Why You Should Stop Reading News.” I encourage you to read it

Wait? What? Less informed?

Reading news is counterproductive, not just a waste of time. I’ve stumbled across science that points out that it’s true. The FS Blog post does not cite the science. Instead, it makes a rational argument. It seems reasonable to me, but YMMV. And rational arguments are not always correct. Whatever.

Why do we read news?

The book “The Elephant in the Brain” cites lots of research to back up its arguments. It does not directly address news-reading but rather political involvement–which requires news-reading.

To understand what your motives for news reading might be, consider this thought experiment:

You are talking to a group of your intelligent friends (of course, your friends are intelligent.) One raises some topic of current concern–maybe it’s the latest police shooting, maybe the results of a recent climate conference, and what Greta Thunberg had to say, maybe Joe Biden’s latest policy initiative–or lack of initiative, maybe the pros and cons of the latest CRT discussion, maybe even the details about another one of those factually rare but seemingly omnipresent school shootings. Whatever.

If you read the news, you can show you are an educated, informed, intelligent person, deserving of their respect, by sharing what you have learned. But, of course, what you have learned may be different than what your friends learned because they have read WaPo and you have read NYT. And thus, you earn respect. Or you can add some details that show you read the same article. And thus, you earn respect. Whatever.

Nobody expects you to know about every issue–just most of the most important ones. However, the person who is up to date on all the latest news tends to get more respect than someone who draws a blank on half of what’s discussed.

But what if you are always weeks behind? What happens to your position within the group?

You can admit ignorance so often before your intelligent friends are driven to conclude that you are one of those uninformed voters who are ruining the country. You lose social status. Which, according to my understanding of the book’s argument, is the point of reading the news. It’s less to gain information and more to maintain or increase status.

It’s anecdata, but I remember years ago when Bobbi and I were traveling in Europe, we read no news for nearly six months. When we returned to the US and started reading, it probably took me two days to catch up on the day’s issues. Meanwhile, I saved six months of news reading.

The fact that you someone can make up six months of not-news-reading in a couple of days indicates that the time spent reading the news during that six months was mostly wasted.

What can you do instead of reading news?

The FS Blog article makes some general recommendations. I will give you my specific practice and my reasons for adopting the practice.

I’m a high IQ guy, but I know some people are more intelligent than me and who get to spend more time reading the news than I have (they are younger, so have more energy and often have jobs that let them do this, so they have more time) and who write lengthy, detailed, well-thought-out analyses of what they have concluded.

One such writer writes pseudonymously as Scott Alexander. I found his writing maybe a decade ago.

He is more intelligent than me, more knowledgeable than me, a better thinker than me, and a better writer. I also think he is more virtuous than me. He has a great deal of epistemic humility (meaning, he allows that he can be wrong about anything he concludes.) I won’t say that he acts with more humility than me because those with sufficient humility don’t get in humility-pecker-measuring contests. Let’s say we are both quite humble.

I am a paying subscriber to his current blog, Astral Codex Ten (ACX), and was to his earlier one, Slate Star Codex (SSC).

I want to be someone like Scott Alexander when I grow up.

I read what he writes instead of reading the news. I read new posts on ACX religiously (and I think I mean “religiously” more than metaphorically but less than literally, but that’s a story for another time.

Here’s why I like ACX and SSC:

1. It is informative and thought-provoking

2. It is entertaining, sometimes funny

3. It is accurate. He links to everything that he uses as source material, so you can check to make sure you agree with his analysis.

4. His community is engaged in thoughtful critique and elaboration of his arguments.

5. He reads and replies to comments, and for important posts, he writes a follow-up “Highlights from the comments on:” and engages with arguments contrary to his

6. He has a Mistakes page that starts with this declaration:

​7. He makes predictions and then reports on his success and failure in predicting. Here are his predictions about Donald Trump and the grading of his predictions

Here is an example of a grade he gives himself:

​8. He has a blogroll of sources that he uses regularly. I read most of them (instead of news)from time to time, and they are all really, really, really good.

I’ve outsourced my news reading to Scott and others who are smarter than me. This leaves me not up-to-the-minute on most things, but over weeks, I’m pretty understanding of essential issues. In addition, the time I save gives me time to read other non-news things.

How does not reading the news solve the problem of misinformation at scale?

It doesn’t.

I think it is important to solve the problem at scale. I don’t think reading news or not-reading news is a solution. But I conjecture that there is a solution. Unfortunately, I don’t know it yet. So I use some of the time I save by not reading news to read things that will help me find a way to solve the problem at scale.

I am sure we cannot solve the problems at scale by machine-gunning our opponents with more facts and better arguments–which is what reading news tempts us to do. Likewise, we can’t solve it by shaming them or calling them stupid.

Instead, I am convinced that I need to do things that improve my ability to see the difference between truth and error. An insight that leads me in the right direction is this:

“…first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

MATTHEW 7:5 (Interlinear New Testament in original Greek with hyperlinks to a Greek/English interpretive dictionary, because I believe in going to source)

(FWIW, I quote the New Testament, but I would not describe myself as Christian. Same as I might quote the Second Law of Thermodynamics without describing myself as a physicist. And I wrote a blog post about the God that I don’t believe in, so I don’t even call myself a deist.)

If there is a solution, I believe it comes removing the beams from my eyes and from loving others as I love myself. (citation)

I conjecture that encouraging others to remove their own beams before addressing others’ motes might scale. Likewise, I imagine that love might scale, And that is why I wrote a post titled “I love you, stop reading news.”

Am I a hypocrite?

Am I not making the mistake of trying to remove the mote from your eyes, dear reader, while mine are still full of beams?

I admit I have not entirely broken the habit of reading the news.

And doesn’t the quotation from Matthew start with the words “Thou hypocrite”

Am I a hypocrite?

Maybe. It might look that way.

It might seem that I am telling someone else to stop reading the news, but I am really reminding myself. The only person whose behavior I can change is my own, which is my primary intent.

Stop reading news, Michael Wolf. If you decide to stop too, reader, then good on you. But I can’t change your mind or behavior. Only you can.

The only thing I can do that has a chance of helping you is to love you as I love myself (citation)

This is why I am writing this. Having friends who care fills me with the desire to do better myself. There is lots of room for me to improve. Because no shit, I love you. And here, once again, are my reasons for loving you.

Summary

I love you.

Stop reading news.

Find someone you think is more intelligent than you (as I have done) and read what they produce and if you have time, read what they recommend.

If you have not found such a person, stop reading news and look. It’s an investment in your future.

If you think no one is smarter than you, then, of course, you should keep reading the news. And I would appreciate your letting us all know who you are. If you are the most intelligent person in the world, we will all benefit from knowing you. And if you are not but think you are, we would all benefit from avoiding you.

Love your neighbor. Forgive those who curse you. Turn the other cheek. Judge not. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it [citations needed]